June is Outdoor Home Month

Get outside. In the past few days we have: gone to the park, watched a softball game, spent an afternoon at the beach, took a boat ride on the Chicago River and walked a gazillion miles.

We don't have a yard, so by default the whole city becomes our outdoor home once we throw open the windows and embrace the summer.

Speaking of throwing open windows - ours have been working overtime these past few weeks...

...in an effort to live a bit greener, we have been going the fresh air route instead of turning on the AC at home. It's been fine - with the help of some simple white fans in the living room and bedrooms (the plainest, most industrial ones we could find) we have not missed our usual refrigerated air much.

Added bonuses of letting a bit more of the outside in: the sounds of summer (the L, kids running by, birds and bbq'ers) are a part of our indoor life, the air inside is FRESH and our electrical bill is low. So far, so good.

How about you so far this season? AC or open windows?

We are hosting the tryouts for the new Green Therapy blog editors here at AT: Chicago. Please take a look at the posts. The writers are from all across the country (Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland, Berkeley and Oakland) with one main thing in common - the wish to blog the best of green for the home. We'd love to hear what you think, so please don't hesitate to comment on the posts. Look for them all this week (2 per day) and check out last week's posts here.

As always, we like to hear from you, so send us your tips, questions, ideas and photos. You can reach us at chicago (at) apartmenttherapy (dot) com. Have a good week and be sure to get outside and play!

Photo: Thanks to fiveten for tagging her gardening photos in flickr with apartmenttherapychicago.